this is it, if Congress had any room to waffle over granting him authority or emergency defense funds, its GONE. Rice has gone public with info. that the public who so sadly remembers 9-11 will not let down. The US will now scream for Saddam's blood more than even the Taliban's. We don't even have to prove UBL is hiding in Iraq like it was looking like they were trying to do. Saddam is already known to give compensation to suicide bombers' families. Now that the American public knows that what was the shadiest man in the world is clearly linked to 9-11, Bush has their mandate.

do not let quotes like this (from the article)

quote: "No one is trying to make an argument at this point that Saddam Hussein somehow had operational control of what happened on Sept. 11, so we don't want to push this too far, "

confuse you when the end of that quote is this:

quote:" but this is a story that is unfolding, and it is getting clearer, and we're learning more," Rice said.

She suggested that details of the contacts would be released later."

they are going to go about it conservatively and cautiously to strengthen the mandate and the appearance of proper "investigative procedure."

We are going to war, sooner and sturdier than I had ever thought possible, even with my model of the coming meta-middle eastern conflict.

[This message has been edited by Cedrios (edited September 26, 2002).]

posted September 26, 200212:56 PM
I'm sorry, but the timing of this strikes me as suspicious. THere are indicators in the article this stuff was known a while ago. If it WAS known, then either Bush IS playing politics with war, or its not concrete enough to mean anything, and he's defending himself from a charge by spreading misleading information. EIther way, the American Public is going to buy this.

If it WASN'T known, then some of the quotes from "Senior Administration officials" don't make any sense.

posted September 27, 200209:54 AM
Not to seem like a complete paranoid, but...

what evidence?

A member of the administration stands up and says "No really, we KNOW that Sadaam had links to Al Qaida, and if we feel like it MAYBE we will explain to you later how we know, and if you are really good, we might even show you some evidence."

How does this change anything?

What happened to the American attitude of not trusting the government. Of demanding accountability and transparency from the government. I'm not saying that the people should be asking the government to disclose the names of agents who gathered information, but they should be saying a hell of alot more than just 'We have evidence that we might show you later'

even if we have video footage that would clearly implicate Sadam, we have no idea if it would be legit.

We have publicly available documentation that clearly shows the State Departments historical willingness to at least plan the falsification of evidence to justify an invasion, and some evidence that this has historically been done.

The turn around time for evidence falsification that can pass expert witnesses is now extremely low, with documentation (forged handwritten/typed mail, passports, bills of sale, etc.) doable within a day, audio within three to four days, and home video footage quality within about two weeks. (This assumes one has the assests, samples to work off of, and personnel prepicked for such short notice work including both voice and body impersonators. If one needs to assemble additional voice, video, or hand writting/typing samples etc. or to find/develop appropriate impersonators then additional time must be allowed.)

This makes it extremely difficult to judge any evidence that comes out after the time frame needed to forge that type of evidence.

Any evidence that comes out, I'll probably take at face value, but there will always be a nagging suspecion that means were made to justify the ends.

LetterRip

[This message has been edited by LetterRip (edited September 27, 2002).]